Friday, April 20, 2012

Bizarro Fiction Month Day 20: A Million Versions of Right

This is April 20th, which means it's also day 20 of Bizarro Fiction Month here on the blog.  Today I'm going to review Matthew Revert's A Million Versions of Right, which is one of the best collections of bizarro short fiction that I've read.  There are only six stories in it, but most of them are fairly long, and all of them were enjoyable.

The book opens with the titular "A Million Versions of Right." This is the story of a young man who discovers that when he ejaculates, he will occasionally release a miniature tiler instead of the expected sperm. The first time this happens he ends up having most of his body covered in tile before being rescued by his father. The whole experience tends to warp his sex life very badly.

The next story is "The Bricolage Scrotum," which is about scrotums. A school principal has hired two local boys to pulp his scrotum in front of his students because he hates scrotums. The boys manage to destroy their own scrotums while practicing. Also there's a scrotum advocacy group that wants to stop the exhibition.

Then We have "The Great Headphone Wank," which is about a man who has a job insulting walls. He is given a pair of headphones that only produce the sounds of masturbation. Weirdness ensues.

"Meeting Max" was the next story, and was one that I though was a bit slow paced, but I still enjoyed it a lot. It's about a guy who lives in the barber district and is obsessed with barbers. A bald guy is going around knocking over comb jars and smashing windows, and our hero tries to track him down Then lots of even weirder stuff happens.

Then come "Power Blink," which is mostly about band-aids.

The final story is "The Bookmark That Wouldn't Work," which is the fictional history of bookmarks, and the story of one woman with reading problems who gets a bookmark that won't work.

I like this collection a lot, and highly recommend it.




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